Tag Archives: EU referendum

As an organisation ruled by 27 commissioners and with a wholly unhealthy and undemocratic nature riddled with corruption – and for 19 years not been able to produce untainted accounts – if it were a candidate state it would not be allowed to join itself. 1

Today we decide on whether Britain will remain or leave the European Union – the likelihood is that we will remain. In one year, two years, ten years, after the campaign circuses have long since departed, the decision we make will continue to reverberate. I stress this point because I sense that we – the collective we – have basically lost sight of it.

The test today ought to have been a more or less straightforward one, if still complex. A decision based upon matters relating solely to Britain’s membership of the European Union: the pros and cons of the institutions comprising the EU per se, and issues directly related to Britain’s future prospects inside or outside of it. Issues I have been attempting to pursue throughout this brief sequence of articles, of which this will certainly be the last installment and very probably the least restrained (apologies in advance).

Friends have said to me that the vote today is really just a choice between David Cameron and Boris Johnson – ergo no choice at all. This is superficially valid, but wrong in all other regards. Doubtless a vote to leave will fatally injury Cameron, and boost Johnson to some extent, but Cameron is stepping down before the next election regardless of this result, and Boris is likely to remain the prime candidate to lead the Tories whatever the referendum outcome. To maximise Tory damage, I very strongly advise voting ‘leave’, but this is equally beside the point – hurting the Tories is certainly a jolly sport, but the relevant issue here is Britain’s EU membership: do we want to stay or not? It is extremely unwise to make long-term decisions purely on the basis of short-term gains.

Other considerations that are totally wide of the mark include voting for the nicer team or the lesser evil. Nigel Farage is obnoxious and abominable, as is Tony Blair (who is solidly ‘remain’ of course), but only one is as yet responsible for the deaths of a million innocent people.

Nor should we be swayed by the opinions of a (lame duck) US President or the very lovely Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. Or tempted to vote on the merits, demerits or the principles (if we can find any) of the various ‘remain’ or the ‘leave’ campaigns – of which there were at least five separate variants (two each for the Tories and Labour and another for UKIP). 2The campaigns are ephemeral. They truthfully added nothing of real substance to an already overheated and rushed debate. Better not to get too drawn by the distraction and miss the genuine importance of the actual vote.

Finally, today’s vote will not open up the possibility of Scotland getting another shot at “independence” (from England and not the EU, obviously). This is another chimera and another distraction. Likewise, in the event of a vote for Brexit, the process of reunifying the divided halves of Ireland will not begin in earnest. If reunification does happen then it will take extended negotiations and a long-term political settlement – Brexit changes very little in this regard.

In short, this truly is a single issue vote: are we better off living inside or outside the EU? Two issues at most, if we add: is the rest of the EU better off with or without the UK, which is a moot point. I believe they are better off without us too.

Brexit does indeed involve a leap in the dark for everyone – people in Britain and elsewhere in the EU. But do we seriously need to remain as a member of the European Union to protect civil liberties (damaged as they are), or to secure workers’ rights (weak as they have become), or even to protect the environment (which TTIP will render impossible)?

Doubtless the Tories are ready to take advantage of the referendum outcome whatever we choose, and if we do decide to leave, then trade unions in particular should be prepared to (temporarily at least) batten down the hatches. Overall, however, we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t because what the EU has on the cards under the guise of “free trade deals” like TTIP (the most infamous but far from the only treaty of this kind) can bring untold damage by means of short-circuiting environmental regulations and the further trampling civil liberties and in ways the Tories could only dare to dream.

And whereas the left is generally galvanised by the cause of fighting a grotesque excrescence like TTIP, an embarrassed silence descends whenever it comes to matters surrounding that another EU “free trade” policy of open borders. In common with ‘downsizing’ and ‘offshoring’ (those widely-criticised globalist strategies that first undermined the West’s industrial labour force), there can be no real dispute that the laissez-faire approach to immigration has likewise driven down salaries for the lowest-paid workers in our wealthier nations, and, that weakening their bargaining position has had a detrimental effect on labour rights. For perfectly understandable reasons, many of the left feel queasy about discussing this issue, but in avoiding it they are also failing the very people they ought to be supporting.

Certainly there is a case to be made for pointing out how the real problem is not “the vast reserve army of low wage labour” but an unfettered capitalist framework that is dependent upon exploiting it (as argued here). However, so long as we are in thrall to “free market” capitalism then the real consequences of any social arrangement must be judged within its strictures. To the capitalist, open borders means cheap labour. Or, as Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC, and Janet Henry, HSBC’s global economist, put it in a research note:

“Globalisation isn’t just a story about a rising number of export markets for western producers. Rather, it’s a story about massive waves of income redistribution, from rich labour to poor labour, from labour as a whole to capital, from workers to consumers and from energy users towards energy producers. This is a story about winners and losers, not a fable about economic growth.” 3 [bold highlight added]

That globalisation has been all about “income redistribution” and “a story of winners and losers” is the hard truth that some on the left – especially amongst social democrats – have tremendous difficulty accepting. Being good internationalists has blinded them to the obvious.

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So here is a list of words to aptly sum up what the ‘left leave’ campaign should have been focussing attention during the last few months: corporatism, neo-liberalism, the so-called “free market”, economic “shock therapy”, and (never forgetting) globalisation. The future of the EU is bleak, the left should have been honestly admitting, and unless there is some process of radical reform, we may soon be unable to reverse the direction we are heading.

For thanks to the EU, the southern states of Europe are about to be driven over an economic cliff and back into a new dark age. Also thanks to the EU, there are many thousands of displaced people abandoned in the squalid and unsanitary camps across the continent. Thanks to the EU, some of these refugees are shipped back across seas they first crossed in overcrowded dinghies only to be returned again to more squalid and dangerous camps they had escaped in Turkey. And meanwhile, thanks to the EU’s very close strategic partner, Nato, Eastern Europe has just hosted Anakonda-16, the largest scale war game since the end of the Cold War – an exercise that actually included tank divisions from Germany moving again within shooting range of Russia’s border. Evidently, the EU is not bringing peace, prosperity and security to Europe – and this outlandish but repeated claim is the biggest distraction of all.

Some, like Varoufakis and Left Unity, say we need to hold together and work within the system to change the EU – which is a distinctly non-revolutionary path, but then Yanis is no revolutionary (as we know). Only by holding the hand of the monster can we hope to correct its bad behaviour, or so the same argument goes, concluding that failure to do so will inevitably result in outright collapse and a return to squabbling national states, which soon afterwards will succumb to a rising right-wing. Legitimate concerns and serious ones, of course, but to little avail when there is no proposed alternative other than the encouragement to hold on more tightly to an admittedly abusive partner.

The ‘left remain’ campaigns of DiEM25 (led by Varoufakis), Another Europe is Possible, Left Unity and the plethora of related organisations (including Avaaz – who never stop sending me reminders of how terrible Brexit would be) are founded on capitulation and acquiescence, while presenting themselves as brimming with hope – well, let me say this: power concedes nothing without a demand, so where is our demand… just a single tiny demand… is there one? How then are we to reform the distant and thoroughly bankrupt institutions of the EU when, underwritten by the treaties on which it became established, all (with the exception of the largely impotent European Parliament) are beyond democratic reach and control and irreconcilably so? Varoufakis et al offer no strategy or programme; not even the faintest whiff of a way forward.

The risks are huge either way to be fair, but I am willing to take the leap into the dark (it is dark in both directions) because we have to try to force a change. I appreciate that a great number who back the campaign to leave are indeed “swivel-eyed” nationalists or worse, but there are countless others – generally less vocal others – who loathe the EU for all the right reasons. This number includes many remnants of the traditional left – the left of Tony Benn and also Jeremy Corbyn (had he been allowed to speak more freely).

Corbyn has evidently been persuaded to toe the line to quell the ongoing war within the Labour Party. His position is therefore the politically expedient one and I reluctantly support his decision – were he to nail his colours to Brexit he would be betting his leadership on a referendum victory. The risks were perhaps too great.

However, the sorry truth is that reform of the EU is tantamount to impossible – as we shall gradually realise if we do vote to remain. It is impossible because the treaties are binding.

On the other hand, a vote for Brexit almost certainly signals the beginning of the end of the European Union as it currently stands. With Britain out of the way, the rest of the EU will be forced either to rearrange it for the better without us (our influence has been a terrible one in any case) or to dissolve (a quite probable outcome). A more genuinely humane international union might then re-emerge, for the principle of European cooperation is certainly a vital one. Unfortunately, however, the EU is now bringing about European disintegration instead.

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“I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a Council Chamber in Europe.” – Kenneth Clarke †

I have previously made the case against independence movements on the grounds that such a move weakens us. However, leaving the EU is not Balkanisation in this sense because the nation state remains intact. In fact, the EU itself is secretly pushing the people of Europe towards a form of Balkanisation by means of expanding technocratic control with an overarching authority in Brussels whilst increasing regionalisation beneath it.

A keyword here is subsidiarity, which is the EU’s given justification for a sustained drive towards localisation. It is the EU’s initiative for supposed “decentralisation” and one that helps to explain why Scotland, Wales and other parts of the UK have been granted regional assemblies and parliaments often in spite of relatively low public interest – this is also another part of Tony Blair’s legacy too. If this trend continues then we can eventually expect to have assemblies for Cornwall, Yorkshire, etc. Ultimately the tiny regions will make up the rump states of a fully federalised Europe.

The word you won’t probably hear, on the other hand, is mediatisation, which was a strategy during feudal times of constructing an intervening layer of authority between the lord and his vassals. For as our national parliaments are slowly hollowed out, more and more powers will be passed either upwards to the Commission (for executive and legislative powers) or downwards (in the case of more trivial day-to-day concerns) to the new regional assemblies. Then, as the old nation states are stripped of autonomy, smaller regions something akin to city states can arise to replace them. This envisaged globalised future is indeed foreshadowed by the “Global Parliament of Mayors”:

The Global Parliament of Mayors is an unprecedented new experiment in democratic global governance platform by, for, and of cities. Mayors from cities large and small, North and South, developed and emerging, will convene in September 2016 to identify and pursue in common the public goods of citizens around the world. For the first time, building on extant urban networks, the GPM will deploy collective urban political power manifesting the right of cities to govern themselves, as well as the responsibility to enact viable, cross-border solutions to global challenges.

In this era of interdependence, where nation states are increasingly dysfunctional and cities are everywhere rising, the moment has come for cities to take the leap from effective local governance to true global governance. 4

From the mission statement of the forthcoming Global Parliament of Mayors which convenes in September.

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Additional: Final thoughts and an open letter

Criticism of the European Union – so-called ‘euroscepticism’ (a stupid term since it implies equivocation, but we must use it anyway) – has today become the preserve and the preoccupation of those on the political right and especially the kinds of political dinosaur Americans fittingly classify as ‘paleoconservatives’. And though, it is an exaggeration to say that leftist resistance to the “European project” is extinct, it is not a tremendous one.

Three decades ago, however, criticism of “Europe” was customarily associated with the political left. The true socialists of old Labour who had so fiercely opposed Britain’s bid for membership of the free trade area known as the EEC, thereafter remained in staunch opposition to the stealthy transfer of political and economic powers to technocrats inside the European Commission. More recently, however, as the old guard has (to an extent quite literally) died away, left-wing ‘euroscepticism’ has undergone a more substantial decline – a trend commensurate with the general shift rightwards in mainstream politics. This is not a coincidence.

The cause of this reversal of the political poles can be quite easily traced back – as with so many political transitions, the transformation began under Thatcher. Desperate to find an exit route, it was during the Thatcher years that leftists of all shades finally rushed blindly towards the welcoming arms of Brussels, forgetting as they did so that Thatcher had already beat them to it – that neo-liberalism was always at the heart of the “European project”:

The decade of Thatcherism that also sidelined democratic socialists like Tony Benn, Peter Shore and Michael Foot and dumped the true left into the wilderness, thereby freed up the political space the left had vacated. Space that was promptly reoccupied by the new social democrats – those fresh-faced adherents of a “Third Way”, who tricked themselves and their followers into imagining that social justice and equality could be achievable by gently softening the edges of our rapacious capitalist system. Thatcher’s other legacy was New Labour itself.

Advocates of this Third Way, now comparatively comfortable with business as usual, found great affinity with the “European project” too; far more so than either the socialists they had usurped or the traditional conservatives who once opposed them. In fact, the entire “centrist” political mainstream of today is resolutely aligned on the question of the European Union, just as it is on all other issues of relevance. But then today’s centre is actually a political extreme – it is Thatcherism-plus, albeit in disguise (we might say in drag!) – which is also the real cause of growing public outrage against the political mainstream.

Win or lose the referendum tonight, the fight goes on. For whether we remain or leave, the forces of oppression will try to press ahead and take advantage of the outcome. The important point is organise our collective action and to constantly speak truth to power – if we are still in Europe next week then, those who oppose its anti-democratic institutions must continue to speak loudly against them. Most crucially, we must not permit the justified resentment of the people of Europe to be misrepresented, stifled, or worst of all, channeled into violent hatred against minorities with the rise of far-right extremism.

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The miserable farce of David Cameron’s “renegotiation” of Britain’s membership of the EU has only served to underline the regressive and undemocratic nature of that institution (Report, 16 February). We know from extreme austerity enforced on the people of Greece that the union is not only undemocratic in itself but also anti-democratic in the profound sense that its institutions will not allow the democratically expressed view of the majority of people to stand if it runs counter to the free market project.

The EU is irreversibly committed to privatisation, welfare cuts, low wages and the erosion of trade union rights. This is why the dominant forces of British capitalism and the majority of the political elite are in favour of staying in the EU. The EU is irrevocably committed to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and other new trade deals, which represent the greatest transfer of power to capital that we have seen in a generation.

Claims that the free movement of labour within the EU is a barrier to xenophobia are false. But without labour rights and an alternative to austerity, migrants will be prey to hostile xenophobic forces with or without the Schengen agreement. And, even more seriously, “Fortress Europe” ensures that those outside the EU cartel of nations are subject to vicious discrimination if they are lucky, and drowning in the Mediterranean if they are not.

2 The ‘remain’ campaign is more strictly speaking two parallel campaigns running in opposite directions. One says that Britain should stay in Europe for reasons of business and security (that’s Tory remain) and then people like Left Unity say we should stay to protect workers’ rights, the environment, and also help migrants. I regard both arguments as dishonest and deeply flawed although since the EU is run primarily in the interests of big business, the Tory remain argument is a tad more truthful.

Update:Please note that the original article begins after the asterisk

On the same day I posted the article below, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) issued the following public statement:

The medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has today announced that it will no longer accept funds from the European Union and Member States, in opposition to their damaging deterrence policies and continued attempts to push people and their suffering away from European shores.

This decision will take effect immediately and will apply to MSF’s projects worldwide.

Continuing:

“For months MSF has spoken out about a shameful European response focused on deterrence rather than providing people with the assistance and protection they need,” said Jerome Oberreit, International Secretary General of MSF. “The EU-Turkey deal goes one step further and has placed the very concept of ‘refugee’ and the protection it offers in danger.”

Last week the European Commission unveiled a new proposal to replicate the EU-Turkey logic across more than 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East.

These deals would impose trade and development aid sanctions on countries that do not stem migration to Europe or facilitate forcible returns, rewarding those that do. Among these potential partners are Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and Afghanistan – four of the top ten* refugee generating countries. [bold emphasis added]

“The wind tears down our tents. Whenever there’s a storm, it blows our tents down,” said Mohammad, a 21-year-old man who fled Syria’s war. “This is how we live. Since when do people in modern Europe live like this? They put us in camps without decent food. We just sit around. We count the days. It’s a slow death.”

Mohammad says he is willing to risk his life by taking a ride in a refrigerated truck to Britain. “Maybe I’ll die, but I’m dying here anyway,” he said.

Photo: Malachy Browne licensed under CC BY 2.0

This comes from an article published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on February 25th. The same piece continues:

Now, with heightened tension in the Calais area, many asylum seekers believe that “the UK is closed”. It used to cost £5,000 to £6,000, but now, perhaps because of heightened security, it costs at least £10,000. Many people don’t have that much, and they are giving up.

But there are few options open to people living a life in limbo. They wonder whether the fact that the authorities fingerprint people who agree to live in the containers might affect a future request for asylum in Britain.

People are also reticent about moving to the containers because they know they won’t feel free there – it is surrounded by a fence, and its residence live under constant surveillance, with rule upon rule marring their daily lives. The authorities have installed new toilets and running water there, but people want to be able to cook, and the fact that they need to register every time they return from the outside world makes it harder to move freely. Visitors, also, are not allowed.

“Look at that. It reminds me of a film I saw back in Sudan about the Nazi detention camps during World War II,” said Omar, a 22-year-old asylum seeker from Darfur. 1

So how did we come to this? Mud-drenched, rat-infested shanty towns only a hundred and fifty miles outside Paris – and closer to London. Places like “the Jungle” where ‘people of colour’, most often fleeing from conflicts initiated by western governments, rather than finding salvation are subjected instead to nonstop harassment by French state and local authorities:

Migrants flee war, repression or living conditions they believe are unacceptable. Their situation in the North of France represents France’s own part in the failure of European policies to welcome refugees; policies that rely on insecurity and the haggling between states as much as they rely on the building of physical and virtual walls to keep migrants at Europe’s borders.

Following the example of most European leaders and heads of states, France’s leaders today are ready to sacrifice and mistreat millions of lives in the vain hope of dissuading future asylum seekers. In Calais, this policy is fanning tensions just as it reinforces perceptions of an increasingly inhospitable France.2

While the French goal is seemingly to push ‘the problem’ (as they see it) over to Britain, the British, in return, are eager to maintain the status quo – although in fact both governments are in cahoots:

“The French would love to pull out of the arrangement. We’ll be telling people, ‘if we leave the EU the Jungle camp in Calais will move to Folkestone’. That’s not something people want” – senior Downing Street source 3

This was first reported by The Telegraph in an article published on February 8th. It surrounds the government’s claim, subsequently expanded upon by Cameron in a press conference, that France may seize on the opportunity presented by a Brexit to renege on the current bilateral Le Touquet treaty that was signed between the UK and France in 2003 to allow the UK to conduct border controls on the French mainland:

However, fewer than usual were convinced by Cameron’s fevered bout of xenophobic scaremongering, and so the same article continues:

[Fellow Tory and Former Defence Secretary] Liam Fox told the World at One that David Cameron’s claim that leaving the EU could lead to the formation of “Jungle” camps in southern England is a “complete red herring” and “utterly untrue”.

“First of all, the treaty is nothing to do with the EU. This is a treaty that was signed between two sovereign governments because it was in both our interests to have this. And it’s not right to misquote the French interior minister, in fact if I tell you his exact words on 20th October last year, he said ‘calling for the border with the English to be opened is not a reasonable solution.

“It would send a signal to people smugglers and would lead migrants to come in far greater numbers. A humanitarian disaster would ensue, it is a foolhardy path and one the government will not pursue’. So the French government have already ruled this out. 4

Of course, the “migrant crisis” (as the media prefers to call it) has many fronts, and relatively few people actually make it as far as Calais. The vast majority instead find themselves held up in rudimentary encampments close to the ports in Italy and Greece where they first landed, or else trapped by newly erected fences as they attempt to trek northwards. Greece, in particular, is the land where many of the victims of our wars (less than 50% are Syrian, others come from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere including Africa 5) are now forced to shelter.

More recently, we have seen the EU horse-trading with Turkey to swap Syrian “migrants” on a one-for-one basis. The deal, which is almost certainly illegal 6, will do little to remedy the situation and only serve to heighten the suffering of the victims. And yet this refugee crisis can be easily summed up in one image:

In other words, the crisis is not just an outcome of unprecedented (if avoidable) circumstances, but a catastrophic consequence of institutional failure to present a workable plan of action or organise a timely and commensurate response. A measure not only of incompetence, but of how disunited the EU now is. Merkel says come and then don’t come, Cameron responds not in my backyard, and although the Greek government has stayed resolute in its commitment to offer humanitarian assistance, East European partners instead slam the door shut.

Moreover, by supplying minimal assistance and practically no aid for what quickly became a second crisis for Greece, this sustained inaction has exacerbated the pre-existing financial crisis which was more dynamically of the EU’s making. Would it be cynical to conclude that Greece is being punished all over again?

Back in June 2012, non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International, former chairman of BP, former EU Commissioner and current UN’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration, Peter Sutherland, was cross-examined by a House of Lords EU home affairs sub-committee investigating global migration. Sutherland, also a member of the Bilderberg steering committee, recommended that the EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states.7

In arguing for greater immigration, Sutherland feigns an internationalist standpoint and presents a case he knows will to appeal to progressives and those on the political left. However, it is a grave mistake to think that Sutherland is an internationalist when in reality he is a globalist. So his desire to “undermine” the “homogeneity” of member states conceals the deeper desire which is to abolish them altogether. To supplant national sovereignty with supranational governance, and in the process hollow out democracy and replace it with overarching technocracy.

To those like Sutherland, the so-called “migrant crisis” therefore represents another prime opportunity. Fresh grounds to empower EU institutions and to give them greater sway over national governments. Sutherland and likeminded globalists are keenly aware that our road to hell is paved with good intentions: good intentions they are happy to exploit.

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Incidentally, for those who remain sceptical that this is actually how the Eurogarchs operate then I direct you to consider the views of British economist Bernard Connolly, who worked for many years inside the European Commission as head of the unit responsible for the European Monetary System and monetary policies. Connolly was sacked by the Commission in 1995 over disagreements about the Exchange Rate Mechanism in the lead up to the introduction of the single currency (criticisms expressed in his book The Rotten Heart of Europe: The Dirty War for Europe’s Money).

Afterwards, Connolly became global strategist at Banque AIG (the Paris-based financial arm of AIG) and it was during his eleven year stint working at AIG when in May 2008 he produced a document entitled “Europe – Driver or Driven?” The opening question of which addresses “What Europe Wants?” to which Connolly supplies the answer in the form of four bullet points:

To use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance

terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance

Note that: MSF – Crash (The Centre de reflexion sur l’action et les savoirs humanitaires) was created by Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999. Its objective is to encourage debate and critical reflexion on the humanitarian practices of the association.

“This is a complete red herring, it is utterly untrue that the French are considering it, it would not lead to a major change and it’s a great pity that those who want to remain in the European Union are not making the case for project Europe, for supranational control that they presumably believe in and they are engaging in what I think are ridiculous scaremongering tactics.

“It is a treaty, which is signed between two sovereign nations who happen to be in the European Union at the time, but it was signed because it was in both countries’ interest.

“In the euro area, the countries in the periphery have nothing at all to offset austerity. They are simply being asked to cut total spending without any form of demand to compensate. I think that is a serious problem.

“I never imagined that we would ever again in an industrialised country have a depression deeper than the United States experienced in the 1930s and that’s what’s happened in Greece.

“It is appalling and it has happened almost as a deliberate act of policy which makes it even worse”. [Bold highlight added]

“The Greek people have been living through hell during the last six years, and unfortunately they trusted that Tsipras [PM] would put an end to the extreme austerity measures, which are combined with a total undemocratic regime. Unfortunately, instead of putting an end, he put his signature to a third memorandum, which is even worse than the previous two…

“People are back on the streets protesting for their rights and dignity because right now they’re being asked to pay taxes which amount to almost the totality of their revenue. They’re asked to give up their homes… They’re asked to surrender public property, which is privatized at very, very low prices. And, they’re also asked to give up democracy”

On 13th July [2015], the democratic elected Greek government of Alexis Tsipras was brought to its knees by the European Union. The “agreement” of 13th of July is in fact a coup d’état. It was obtained by having the European Central Bank close down the Greek banks and threaten never to allow them to open up again, until the Greek government accepted a new version of a failed program. Why? Because official Europe could not stand the idea that a people suffering from its self-defeating austerity program dared elect a government determined to say “No!”.

So begins the call for “A plan B in Europe” put together by a group of prominent European left-leaning politicians from Parti de Gauche (France), Die Linke (Germany), Red Green Alliance (Denmark), Socialist Party (SP) (Ireland), Bloco de Esquerda (Portugal), and Syriza (Greece). Top of the bill is Yanis Varoufakis (a principle author, I imagine, given some of the polemical flourishes within this signed but otherwise uncredited page-long call to action).

The piece continues:

We must learn from this financial coup. The euro has become the tool of economic and governmental dominance in Europe by a European oligarchy hiding behind the German government, delighted to see Mrs Merkel doing all the « dirty work » other governments are incapable of undertaking. This Europe only generates violence within nations and between them: mass unemployment, fierce social dumping and insults against the European Periphery that are attributed to Germany’s leadership while parroted by all the “elites”, the Periphery’s not excluded. The European Union has thus become an agent of an extreme right wing ethos and a vehicle for annulling democratic control over production and distribution throughout Europe. 3

Now let us go back nine months – back to the eve of the Greek referendum during the dog days of last summer, and just before the extraordinary ‘oxi’ vote which momentarily reverberated across our western hemisphere.

Yanis Varoufakis [3:45 mins in]: Let me tell you something which is probably unknown. Ever since we declared the referendum and we incensed our European partners we had the most interesting proposals coming from Brussels. Perhaps this referendum and the impasse it represents concentrated several minds in Brussels and we’ve had some really good proposals – proposals we would sign on the dotted line for.

Paul Mason: You have a proposal you would sign on the dotted line for?

Varoufakis: Yes, we do.

Mason: Where is it?

Varoufakis: Well, I’m not going to tell you. It’s somewhere in this building. But the crucial part of the story is that before this proposal becomes a genuine negotiating document which we can sign off on Monday, the people have to empower us with a “no”.

From the Channel 4 news interview embedded above broadcast on July 3rd 2015 that is also available here.

Shortly thereafter [July 5th] the people of Greece, perhaps in light of Varoufakis’ advice, went to the polls and voted overwhelming in favour of rejecting the Eurogroup deal with its demands for increasing doses of “austerity” and ‘Washington Consensus’-style ‘conditionalities’ — the enforced privatisation of public services and other forms of so-called ‘deregulation’. To which the response from Brussels was to immediately double down by issuing still harsher neoliberal demands. With this, the mask of European social democracy fell away completely.

Nobel laureate economist, Paul Krugman, was one who helped to promote the hashtag #ThisIsACoup when he wrote in the New York Times:

This Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag #ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

Left Unity (which has a loose alliance with political parties Syriza and Podemos) also sent a message of support to the Greeks:

The people of Greece have resisted every threat, every piece of establishment propaganda telling them a No vote would mean ruin, and asserted their democratic rights. This will be a No heard around the world.

Now is the time to celebrate – and to step up our solidarity ahead of the Troika’s next move. Come along to what will now be a victory rally at the TUC’s Congress House, organised by Greece Solidarity Campaign.

And the Greeks had indeed empowered their government with a resounding ‘no’, but instead of fighting on, Syriza under Tsipras’ leadership swiftly capitulated in what must be one of the fastest political U-turns of all time. In response, Varoufakis resigned, refusing to criticise his friend Tsipras, and also declining an invitation to join a small breakaway faction who hoped to restore the party’s anti-austerity ticket on which Tsipras and Syriza had stood little more than six months previously.

So there is a mystery here that remains. Varoufakis, who prides himself on openness, has simply never explained what actually happened during those most momentous days in early July. Specifically, what became of that proposal from Brussels he was so keen “to sign on the dotted line”. Surely he owes the Greek people a fuller explanation.

Moreover, while Varoufakis was quick to attribute blame for the Eurogroup failures on the inflexibility of Wolfgang Schäuble and fellow German Karl Lamers, he has to a large extent absolved other key players including, most notably, President of the ECB, Mario Draghi for their part in “the coup” (his words).

I have consistently defended Varoufakis and Tsipras and been scathing of others on the left for being too hurried in passing judgement and unduly hypercritical (as many earlier posts testify). Caught up in the drama, like others hoping Syriza’s election signified the beginning of truly revolutionary reforms, I confess that I became a cheerleader for both.

With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that Syriza and Varoufakis were both tremendously guilty of an over-reliance on the efficacy of “reasonableness” (more here), because ‘reasonableness’ only ever makes headway when it engages with opposition that is principled and reasoned. Against the irrational, it is blunt, and against the unscrupulous it becomes a danger to itself. Yet Syriza and Varoufakis seem incapable of learning this simple lesson. This is what Varoufakis wrote in the abstract to his “Confessions of an Erratic Marxist” [December 2013]:

Should we use this once-in-a-century capitalist crisis as an opportunity to campaign for the dismantling of the European Union, given the latter’s enthusiastic acquiescence to the neoliberal policies and creed? Or should we accept that the Left is not ready for radical change and campaign instead for stabilising European capitalism? This paper argues that, however unappetising the latter proposition may sound in the ears of the radical thinker, it is the Left’s historical duty, at this particular juncture, to stabilise capitalism; to save European capitalism from itself and from the inane handlers of the Eurozone’s inevitable crisis. 4

Throughout the crisis, he and the party he once represented at the Eurogroup meetings have been chewed up and spat out time and again and yet his response has been to remain unruffled and reasonable in his continued fight (hardly the right word) “to save European capitalism from itself”.

Today Varoufakis leads a parallel campaign Democracy In Europe 2025 made up of lecture tours and larger academic-style conferences making speculative calls for a Plan B in Europe. Beyond the well-meaning rhetoric, the movement is entirely bereft of strategy. And my immediate question to Varoufakis is actually this: why must we wait until 2025 to bring democracy (a gift of the ancient Greeks) back to Europe? After all he knows better than most that a week in politics is an exceedingly long time – so a decade might as well be an aeon.

Here then, to redress the balance of earlier posts (at the risk of angering readers and friends alike), I present the condemnatory appraisal courtesy of political commentator James Petras, who in March 2015 (a mere two months after Syriza were elected) wrote the following:

The vast majority of Greeks, who voted for Syriza, expected some immediate relief and reforms. They are increasingly disenchanted. They did not expect Tsipras to appoint Yanis Varoufakis, a former economic adviser to the corrupt neo-liberal PASOK leader George Papandreou, as Finance Minister. Nor did many voters abandon PASOK, en masse, over the past five years, only to find the same kleptocrats and unscrupulous opportunists occupying top positions in Syriza, thanks to Alexis Tsipras index finger.

Nor could the electorate expect any fight, resistance and willingness to break with the Troika from Tsipras’ appointments of ex-pat Anglo-Greek professors. These armchair leftists (‘Marxist seminarians’) neither engaged in mass struggles nor suffered the consequences of the prolonged depression.

Syriza is a party led by affluent upwardly mobile professionals, academics and intellectuals. They rule over (but in the name of) the impoverished working and salaried lower middle class, but in the interests of the Greek, and especially, German bankers.

They prioritize membership in the EU over an independent national economic policy. They abide by NATO, by backing the Kiev junta in the Ukraine, EU sanctions on Russia, NATO intervention in Syria/Iraq and maintain a loud silence on US military threats to Venezuela! 5

By latest estimates total Greek debt is 384 billion euros, or US$440 billion. That’s approaching nearly twice the size of Greece’s annual GDP. A decade ago, in 2007-08 before the global crash, Greek debt was roughly half of what it is today, in terms of both total debt and as a percent of GDP. Greek debt was actually less than a number of Eurozone economies. So Greece’s debt has been primarily caused by the 2008-09 crash, Greece’s six year long economic depression [that] followed, the extreme austerity measures imposed on it by the Troika during this period which has been the primary cause of its long depression, and the Troika’s piling of debt on Greece to repay previously owed debt.

Contrary to European media spin, it’s not been rising Greek wages or excessive government spending that has caused the US$440 billion in Greek debt. Since 2009 Greek annual wages have fallen from 23,580 to less than 18,000 euros. Government spending has fallen from 118 billion euros to 82 billion.

writes Jack Rasmus in an extremely detailed overview of the state of the Greek crisis in light of the recent parliamentary vote (passed by a narrow margin of 153 to 145) to implement the latest demands of “the Troika” in order to ensure another tranche of unpayable loans. “Bailouts” that, as Rasmus explains at length, are then returned directly to the creditors:

As a recent in depth study by the European School of Management and Technology, ‘Where Did the Greek Bailout Money Go?‘, revealed in impeccably researched detail, Greek debt payments ultimately go to Euro bankers. For example, of the 216 billion euros, or US$248 billion, in loans provided to Greece by the Troika in just the first two debt deals of May 2010 and March 2012, 64 percent (139 billion euros) was interest paid to banks on existing debt; 17 percent (37 billion euros) to Greek banks (to replace money being taken out by wealthy Greeks and businesses and sent to northern Europe banks), and 14 percent (29 billion euros) to pay off hedge funds and private bankers in the 2012 deal. Per the study, less than 5 percent of the 216 billion euros went to Greece to spend on its own economy. As the study’s authors concluded, “ the vast majority (more than 95 percent) went to existing creditors in the form of debt repayments and interest payments”. And that’s just the 2010 and 2012 Troika deals. Last August’s third deal is no doubt adding more to the totals. 6

[bold highlight added]

Click here to read Jack Rasmus’ full article published in Counterpunch.

The cycles of debt-repayment might literally be never-ending, because Greece will never be able to fully repay all of its (odious) debts. It is a situation compounded because Greece’s already floundering economy is completely suffocated by the Troika’s imposed “austerity” regime.

But this disastrous situation is no accident. The trap in which Greece finds itself satisfies two neo-liberal objectives. Firstly, Greece becomes so impoverished that it is forced to sell state assets at rock-bottom prices. Secondly, the sustained wealth transfer from the pockets of the ordinary Greeks into the hands of the bankers helps to prop up a failed financial system.

Setting the bizarre academic justifications aside, and overlooking the deeper reasons Greece became so indebted in the first place, what we see is how the Troika – two thirds of which is the EU – has put the sanctity of debt repayment far above the sanctity of human well-being. So whenever Greece comes up gasping for air, the IMF and the EU repeatedly pushes it back under again:

The media persists in calling the looting of Greece a “bailout.”

To call the looting of a country and its people a “bailout” is Orwellian. The brainwashing is so successful that even the media and politicians of looted Greece call the financial imperialism that Greece is suffering a “bailout.”

writes former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts in a recent article entitled “We Have Entered The Looting Stage of Capitalism”. In the piece, Roberts explains the EU’s role and the IMF’s apparent policy shift as follows:

Having successfully used the EU to conquer the Greek people by turning the Greek “leftwing” government into a pawn of Germany’s banks, Germany now finds the IMF in the way of its plan to loot Greece into oblivion.

The IMF’s rules prevent the organization from lending to countries that cannot repay the loan. The IMF has concluded on the basis of facts and analysis that Greece cannot repay. Therefore, the IMF is unwilling to lend Greece the money with which to repay the private banks.

The IMF says that Greece’s creditors, many of whom are not creditors but simply bought up Greek debt at a cheap price in hopes of profiting, must write off some of the Greek debt in order to lower the debt to an amount that the Greek economy can service.

The banks don’t want Greece to be able to service its debt, because the banks intend to use Greece’s inability to service the debt in order to loot Greece of its assets and resources and in order to roll back the social safety net put in place during the 20th century. […]

The way Germany sees it, the IMF is supposed to lend Greece the money with which to repay the private German banks. Then the IMF is to be repaid by forcing Greece to reduce or abolish old age pensions, reduce public services and employment, and use the revenues saved to repay the IMF.

As these amounts will be insufficient, additional austerity measures are imposed that require Greece to sell its national assets, such as public water companies and ports and protected Greek islands to foreign investors, principally the banks themselves or their major clients. […]

In other words, Greece is being destroyed by the EU that it so foolishly joined and trusted. The same thing is happening to Portugal and is also underway in Spain and Italy. The looting has already devoured Ireland and Latvia (and a number of Latin American countries) and is underway in Ukraine.

The current newspaper headlines reporting an agreement being reached between the IMF and Germany about writing down the Greek debt to a level that could be serviced are false. No “creditor” has yet agreed to write off one cent of the debt. All that the IMF has been given by so-called “creditors” is unspecific “pledges” of an unspecified amount of debt writedown two years from now.

The newspaper headlines are nothing but fluff that provide cover for the IMF to succumb to pressure and violate its own rules. The cover lets the IMF say that a (future unspecified) debt writedown will enable Greece to service the remainder of its debt and, therefore, the IMF can lend Greece the money to pay the private banks. […]

We have entered the looting stage of capitalism. Desolation will be the result. 7

The overarching agenda of the EU – a plan rarely mentioned above a murmur – is to fuse its member nations under unelected technocratic governance for the benefit of a few corporations and the oligarchs who own them. So the notion that sticking by the EU is some sense an act of European solidarity is extremely misguided. Having already sold many of its people down the river, however, we are rapidly approaching a critical and perilous moment.

The far-right is now on the rise in many parts of Europe – Greece being an example, although thankfully Golden Dawn remains very much a minority party. And this swing towards ring-wing extremism is a direct consequence of the EU’s savage economic policies combined with its abject failure to save refugees and resolve the so-called “migrant crisis” (more in a later piece). As this alarming political shift occurs, the EU does next to nothing to address it. No debt relief for Greece or the other struggling member states. No let up on enforced “austerity” or privatisation. Neo-liberalism to the bitter end. But then, after Greece was collectively punished for the insolence of its ‘oxi’ vote last summer, only the most dewy-eyed believers can remain in serious doubt of the EU’s callous indifference towards the plight of its poorest citizens.

It is a dangerous lie to assert that the euro and the EU serve Europeans and shield them from crisis. It is an illusion to believe that Europe’s interests can be protected within the iron cage of the Eurozone’s governance “rules” and within the current Treaties. President Hollande’s and Prime Minister Renzi’s method of behaving like a “model student”, or in fact a “model prisoner”, is a form of surrender that will not even result in clemency. The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said it clearly: « there can be no democratic choice against the European treaties ». This is the neoliberal adaptation of the « limited sovereignty » doctrine invented by the Soviet leader Brezhnev in 1968. Then, the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring with their tanks. This summer, the EU crushed the Athens Spring with its banks.

We are determined to break with this “Europe”. It is the basic condition needed to rebuild cooperation between our peoples and our countries on a new basis. How can we enact policies of redistribution of wealth and of creation of decent jobs, especially for the young, ecological transition and the rebuilding of democracy within the constraints of this EU? We have to escape the inanity and inhumanity of the current European Treaties and remould them in order to shed the straightjacket of neoliberalism, to repeal the Fiscal Compact, and to oppose the TTIP.

We live in extraordinary times. We are facing an emergency. Member-states need to have policy space that allows their democracies to breathe and to put forward sensible policies at the member-state’s level, free of fear of a clamp down from an authoritarian Eurogroup dominated by the interests of the strongest among them and of big business, or from an ECB that is used as a steamroller that threatens to flatten an “uncooperative country”, as it happened with Cyprus or Greece.

We should reject wholeheartedly the fudge that David Cameron came back from Brussels with. He is asking the public to support staying within a reformed Europe, but he has deformed Europe in the process of creating this fudge.

says Economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in response to the question “How should British voters who are dissatisfied with the EU view the referendum?”

He continues:

Yet at the same time we should also reject the Eurosceptic view that Britain should leave the EU, but stay within the single market. I have a lot of respect for Tory Eurosceptics with a Burkean view of the sovereignty of national parliaments. The problem is that they also support staying in the single market. This is an incoherent proposition: it’s impossible to stay in the single market and keep your sovereignty. 1

Which is surely a noteworthy admission (hence the bold emphasis) from the person most prominent in the left-wing half of the campaign to stay.

Click here to read more of the transcribed interview with Yanis Varoufakis in which discusses the launch of his new ‘Democracy in Europe’ movement (DiEM25).

*

When Michael Chessum, a major organiser of the pro-Remain ‘Another Europe is Possible’ (AEiP) movement, is questioned about what concrete ‘changes’ he would like to see in EU, he simply dodges the question. Chessum’s behaviour generalises. To my knowledge, not a single supporter of Remain has presented a satisfying answer to the question of how we are supposed to go about reforming the EU. Even Yanis Varoufakis during his recent ‘Lunch with the Financial Times’ interview confessed that in reality the EU isn’t going to be reformed to anywhere near the extent the Remainers are hoping for (attempts to reform ‘will probably end in failure like all the best intentions’, he claimed). Even Remain supporter Ed Rooksby can write on his blog about how he is ‘not particularly convinced by arguments emanating from [AEiP] in relation to the possibility of transforming EU institutions in a leftist direction’. How is a new, reformed EU possible? How can we change it to break from the Washington Consensus? The answers are, worryingly, not forthcoming.

writes Elliot Murphy in a recently published Counterpunch article in which he deliberates on all sides of the EU referendum campaign.

Murphy’s case is not so much that a ‘Left Exit’ can be delivered, but that ‘Left Remain’ is replete with “airy-fairy proposals” and devoid of “any concrete solutions”. That, as he rightly asserts:

In theory, another anything is possible: Another New Zealand, Another Skelmersdale, Another Isla Nublar, Another Tamriel. It is not as if another EU is inherently unreachable, but rather that without any posited, realistic steps to achieve it, the hopes of the Remain camp will quickly dissolve after June 23rd, no matter which side wins. 2

More from Murphy later.

*

On February 18th, an assorted group of prominent and not so prominent leftists including Caroline Lucas PM (Green), Cat Smith MP (Labour shadow minister for women), Marina Prentoulis (Syriza UK), Kate Hudson (Left Unity), Michael Mansfield and Nick Dearden put their names to a letter that appeared in the Guardian outlining reasons to get solidly behind what they describe as “a radical ‘in’ vote” to Europe:

Our campaign will put the case for staying in the EU independently of Cameron and big business, opposing any part of a “renegotiation” that attacks workers’, migrants’ or human rights. We will combine campaigning for an in vote with arguing for an alternative economic model, maintaining European citizens’ rights to live and work across the EU, and for far-reaching democratic reforms of European institutions. 3

Behind the initiative was a newly-fledged campaign group Another Europe is Possible that one of the lesser known signatories above, Luke Cooper, lecturer in politics at Anglia Ruskin University, helped to establish. In a related piece published a fortnight earlier [Feb 4th], Cooper prepared the ground for the campaign launch on the openDemocracy website. Titled “A different Europe or bust”, Cooper of course makes the case for staying, although he is also quick to concede:

None of us support the status quo; we all recognise radical institutional and political change is needed. Most of us also know, however, that a British exit would leave workers even more vulnerable to a Tory government and would not be a step towards the social Europe we believe in.

Continuing:

Rising nationalist sentiment, the structurally embedded neoliberalism of Eurozone institutions and the new downturn in the global economy all create a significant challenge for how to go about constructing an alternative. Taken together they require the left to construct a political alternative that is, firstly, bold and radical enough to address the systemic causes of the current crises and, secondly, rejects the illusion that a retreat into competing protectionist states offers even a partial answer. 4

What Cooper and others on the left are advocating then is a fresh start to Europe – a plan B:

[B]reaking with austerity and constructing a European new deal based on ecologically sustainable investment in jobs and growth. 5

As a cautious but committed internationalist, I have a great deal of sympathy with their position. Undeniably Europe needs a fresh start founded upon an economic ‘new deal’ that can halt a disastrous economic decline and rescue the poorest partner nations. To be nitpicking, however, such vitally needed investment must be injected into infrastructure projects and to boost productive capacity rather than less intangibly into “jobs and growth”. Without productive activity, creation of “jobs and growth”, irrespective of ‘sustainability’, will not secure long-term economic prosperity.

But the significant and most probably insurmountable difficulty is here comes in the shape of the EU institutions themselves. For these undemocratic institutions are not merely disinclined to make the sorts of ‘new deal’ investments required, but staunchly antithetical to ‘bailouts’ of every kind other than those needed to keep afloat the “too big to fail” banks.

Moreover, without a fleshed out programme of demands for genuine reform, these sorts of advocacy for ‘a better Europe’, are dangerous exercises in building castles in the air. For whose purpose does it really serve to say that although the EU is a monster (as Varoufakis has many times described it) we might coax it into better behaving itself when we have literally no firm ideas on how to force a change? Worse, since beneath the veneer of wishful optimism runs a deep vein of fear-mongering hardly less noxious than in the official Tory-led ‘Remain’ campaign:

A vote to ‘leave’ will not create the political space for a socialist Europe. The fragmentation of the EU would be on a right-wing, intolerant and nationalist basis. It would be a Europe of Le Pen, Farage, Orban and others on the right.6

Taken from a strident and hectoring post from Left Unity in support of the Another Europe is Possible campaign. The same post ends with words from Felicity Dowling, Left Unity’s Principal Speaker, who says:

‘We stand with those who have most to lose in the EU referendum campaign: with the children of workers who have lost child benefit, with the migrants who face further unjust vilification as the debate rages.

‘We stand with the tens of thousands fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

‘We stand together with British and European workers.’

It follows by omission (presumably) that whoever wishes to leave, therefore, does NOT stand with the refugees or the British workers. That by default we stand in opposition to both. Indeed, if judged by Dowling’s list then our dereliction is so grievous that a vote for Brexit is tantamount to voting National Front…! 7

As reader Liz Langrick wrote in a heartfelt response to that Another Europeletter in the Guardian:

Your pro-EU stance seems to suggest that leaving the EU is a preoccupation of the Tory right and all voters of the centre-left should be pro-EU because it somehow represents progressive politics and is a vague force for good. But this is a huge betrayal of the sections of society you purport to speak for.

Adding:

Quite clearly an unlimited supply of low-skilled labour – which is what freedom of movement represents – makes it ever easier for employers to offer zero-hours or insecure employment, both for migrants and for British low-paid. This is benefiting only business owners not known for their public-mindedness or even paying any tax. How can anyone on the left be in favour of a system that perpetuates this? Any improvements to workers’ rights the EU may have secured have been and will continue to be fundamentally undermined by this, and arguing that we can change this from within is pie in the sky – as the difficulties Cameron’s negotiations have encountered clearly show.

And aside from the economic impacts on the poorer sections of society, it’s ironic that those on the left, particularly Labour MPs, support membership of an organisation that is so deeply undemocratic and undermines the role of ordinary people in the law-making/representation process.

So please stop clinging to the idea that the EU is progressive and therefore we must stay in at all costs. The EU is fundamentally driven by the demands of Germany and France. 8

To which I simply wish to add a single, small, but important, caveat. The EU is not driven much if at all by the demands of either the French or Germans, presuming that we are speaking of the French and German people (and if it were, then it would bear a better semblance to democracy). It is instead an apparatus serving corporate interests, the most powerful of which are the major banks. So for “Germany and France” it is better to read: Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas and Société Générale.

*

I shall conclude with a more extended quote from Elliot Murphy’s excellent Counterpunch article which details a few of the many intractable obstructions to this envisaged “Plan B” – meaning reform in favour of social justice, labour rights and a genuinely more equal society – for the European Union:

This groundswell of support for Remain across substantial parts of the Left is hard to square with the facts. State aid to declining industries, along with renationalisation, are not permitted by current EU laws (under directive 2012/34/EU), and any mildly progressive government which managed to get elected in 2020 would be hindered from the outset by the EU. Considerable reforms of the energy market would also be illegal under EU directives 2009/72EU and 2009/73/EU. Collective bargaining is becoming much weaker across the EU, most vividly in France and Germany.

McDonnell’s plans for People’s Quantitative Easing? Outlawed by Article 123 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The series of anti-trade union laws introduced in Britain over the past few decades? The EU has no qualms with these whatsoever, showing no interest in providing even modest forms of protection for workers.

As the Labour Leave campaign points out, the EU would also outlaw an end to NHS outsourcing, tougher measures on tax avoidance, and general improvements to workers’ rights. The soft Left’s talk of international solidarity and the brotherhood of man in relation to the EU is absurd, especially as it continues to drive forward deeply militaristic and undemocratic (or rather, anti-democratic) policies. The EU is, after all, one the world’s major post-war imperialist projects, boasting an inherently and aggressively exploitative relation with the global South. The entirety of the EU parliament could be filled with McDonnells and Iglesias’s and no substantial reform would be forthcoming: The parliament is an institution purely of amendment and all power lies with the civil servants and the unelectable Commission.

And while Cameron, Johnson, Gove and Osborne are not the most admirable men in the world, they cannot be blamed for everything: It is the EU which has been hindering a just and lasting resolution to the refugee problem, not the UK state. A Left argument for Leave is firmly grounded not in the Left Remain camp’s ‘politics of hope’ (Owen Jones’s terminology), but rather in a well-earned sense of pessimism. As Chris Hedges recently told Vice: ‘This kind of mania for hope, that has infected even the Left, is a political pacifier. You know, everybody is addicted to these happy thoughts, and that keeps us complacent’. 9

This year’s Bilderberg meeting is about to kick-off in Dresden today, and in one of Charlie Skelton’s preliminary sketches published on Monday [June 6th], he speculates on how the men behind the police cordons, the “the high priests of globalisation” as former attendee Will Hutton described them, are viewing the prospect of Brexit:

“A disaster for everyone” is how Henri de Castries [the Chairman of the group], the boss of AXA and a director of HSBC, describes Brexit. But in particular, it is a disaster for his banking and big business colleagues at Bilderberg. Thomas Enders, the CEO of Airbus, who sits on Bilderberg’s steering committee – the group’s governing body – said, in a recent interview with CNBC, that his industry would be “lobbying” against Brexit. […]

Goldman Sachs has two senior representatives on Bilderberg’s steering committee: James A. Johnson, a board member of the bank, and Robert Zoellick, the chairman of Goldman Sachs’ board of international advisors. We know from Charity Commission accounts that Goldman Sachs, along with BP, is one of the key funders of the group, and we also know that they’ve been pumping “a substantial six-figure sum” into the Remain campaign. And Goldman Sachs doesn’t spend money lightly. The Remain campaign is clearly close to whatever they have instead of a heart.

For Bilderberg, as for Goldman Sachs, the idea that there might be any kind of push-back against globalisation is a horrific one. I suspect we’ll glimpse some frowning faces behind the tinted glass as the limousines start rolling up on Thursday.

As Skelton concludes:

The prospect of Brexit “frightens me”, admit Ken Jacobs, the head of Lazard, and another member of Bilderberg’s inner circle. Not much frightens these people. Only two things: sunlight and Brexit. 10

7Here is my own comment which you can also read by following the link:

With due respect, the choice as you present it is a false one. Firstly, voting to stay inside the EU will automatically mean assenting to Plan A – there is no Plan B. On the other hand, there are many reasons to vote to leave the EU (not mentioned above) that have nothing whatsoever to do with building walls and a fortress Europe – which is something happening in the extant EU. As is the financial ruin of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. And as is TTIP.

The EU is a technocracy run at the behest of the corporations and big finance that urgently needs to be undone. The current disintegration of Europe is happening largely because of policies of the EU. Certainly the nations of Europe must survive, but if this to happen then it may be necessary for the EU to perish.

“Who runs the European Union?” This is the question front and centre of the excellent 2012 documentary The Brussels Business which takes the viewer on “a journey into the corridors of power of the biggest economy on earth – the European Union.” What filmmakers Matthieu Lietaert (Belgium) and Friedrich Moser (Italy) find is a Byzantine complex of corporate entanglements and high-powered lobby groups.

Assiduously researched and documented, the real importance of this film is that almost uniquely it presents an exposé of the European Union from a leftist perspective:

On Tuesday [May 31st] the European Commission together with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft announced a code of conduct “to combat the spread of illegal hate speech online in Europe”:

The definition of illegal online content is based on the Framework Decision on Combatting Racism and Xenophobia which criminalises the public incitement to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.1

In accordance with the directive, views and opinions that the aforementioned corporations deem “hate speech” will be removed within 24 hours, whereas “alternative” content deemed “a counter narrative” to “hate speech” will be actively promoted. In other words, the tech giants who already own most of the internet will be put in charge of policing it too:

In short, the “code of conduct” downgrades the law to a second-class status, behind the “leading role” of private companies that are being asked to arbitrarily implement their terms of service. This process, established outside an accountable democratic framework, exploits unclear liability rules for companies. It also creates serious risks for freedom of expression as legal but controversial content may well be deleted as a result of this voluntary and unaccountable take down mechanism. 2

Today, on 31 May, European Digital Rights (EDRi) and Access Now delivered a joint statement on the EU Commission’s “EU Internet Forum”, announcing our decision not to take part in future discussions and confirming that we do not have confidence in the ill considered “code of conduct” that was agreed.

Launched at the end of 2015, the “EU Internet Forum” was meant to counter vaguely defined “terrorist activity and hate speech online”. The discussions were convened by the European Commission and brought together almost exclusively US-based internet companies and representatives of EU Member States. While no civil society organisations were invited to attend the discussions on terrorism, several civil society representatives were allowed to take part in some of the discussions on online hate speech. However, civil society was systematically excluded from the negotiations that led to the voluntary “code of conduct” for IT companies – an official document that was presented today, despite the lack of transparency and public input into its content.

Irish MEP Luke “Ming” Flanagan visits the TTIP reading room where he can read texts that have already been agreed on – in the language of the EU this constitutes “democratic oversight”. He is not allowed a camera or tape recorder:

*

The agreement we have secured means that the EU Member States will fully support the European Commission’s recent trade strategy. Central to this strategy are ambitious and comprehensive trade deals that will substantially boost the UK’s growth and economic security. […]

Concluding all the trade deals already underway could ultimately be worth in total more than £20 billion a year to UK GDP. These include the UK’s top trade priority: an agreement between the EU and the US (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), which alone could add £10 billion to UK GDP.1

Taken from “The Best Of Both Worlds”; the government policy document that explains Cameron’s negotiated deal with the EU. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) features centrally in the new arrangements.

The first point to note in the extract reprinted above is that a claim that TTIP “will substantially boost the UK’s growth and economic security” is certainly bogus. Long-term economic projections of any kind are notoriously unreliable under the best of circumstances, but here we have a far from impartial assessment. Indeed, as its title “The Best of Both Worlds” makes blatant, this is a sales pitch.

Embedded below is an excellent short film produced by wikileaks about the American-led “free trade agreements” collectively known as the 3Ts: namely Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the lesser known Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). Quite literally everyone should watch this film:

In reality, these treaties have little to nothing to do with facilitating trade in any ordinary sense, but enable a greater transfer of power away from democratic government and into the hands of the unelected corporatocracy. Operating at their heart is a parallel judicial system known as the Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), which is conducted on the basis of secret tribunals open solely to the transnational corporations (our governments do not have access).

This legal arrangement permits companies to sue states for anything that adversely affects their profits. Thus, under the rules of TTIP (the precise details of which remain as a closely guarded secret), national governments will lose jurisdiction to a kangaroo court that sits in judgement of all impediments to profit-making. Paring back regulations under the guise of “free trade” will thereby rig the market still more in the favour of a few special interests.

Such a thoroughgoing dismantlement of regulations has tremendous ramifications both for individuals and for our communities. It threatens the environment, our education system, healthcare (the NHS is especially endangered) and even privacy. In short, if ratified the 3Ts will impact the lives of all of those who live in signatory nations (and that includes nearly all developed countries). The EU is committed to signing two of these treaties – TTIP and also TISA.

Here are a few extracts from a detailed analysis of TTIP published by Der Spiegel International and entitled “Corporation Carte Blanche: Will US-EU Trade Become Too Free?”:

Lori Wallach had but 10 minutes to speak when she stepped up to podium inside Room 405 at George Washington University, located not too far away from the White House. Her audience was made up of delegates currently negotiating the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union.

They had already spent hours listening to presentations by every possible lobbying group — duty bound to hear myriad opinions. But when Wallach, a trade expert for the consumer protection group Public Citizen, took the stage, people suddenly started paying attention. The 49-year-old Harvard lawyer, after all, is a key figure in international trade debates.

“The planned deal will transfer power from elected governments and civil society to private corporations,” she said, warning that the project presents a threat of entirely new dimensions. [bold emphasis added]

The same article, which was published more than two years ago, then outlines how TTIP will impact our societies:

After the third round of negotiations, an unusually broad alliance of anti-globalization groups, NGOs, environmental and consumer protection groups, civil rights groups and organized labor is joining forces to campaign against TTIP.

These critics have numerous concerns about the treaty – including their collective fear that the convergence of standards will destroy important gains made over the years in health and nutrition policy, environmental protection and employee rights. They argue the treaty will make it easier for corporations to turn profits at the public’s expense in areas like water supply, health or education. It would also clear the path for controversial technologies like fracking or for undesired food products like growth hormone-treated meat to make their way to Europe. Broadly worded copyrights would also restrict access to culture, education and science. They also believe it could open the door to comprehensive surveillance. 2

More recently [Feb 22nd], the Guardian published an article exposing how “TTIP deal poses ‘real and serious risk’ to NHS, says leading QC”:

The controversial transatlantic trade deal set to be agreed this year would mean that privatisation of elements of the NHS could be made irreversible for future governments wanting to restore services to public hands, according to a new legal analysis.

The legal advice was prepared by one of the UK’s leading QCs on European law for the Unite trade union, which will reveal on Monday that it has been holding talks with the government about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal between Europe and the US.

Unite believes the government has been keeping Britain in the dark over the impact of the deal and argues the NHS should be excluded from the trade deal. The government dismissed the idea that TTIP poses a threat as “irresponsible and false”.

TTIP would give investors new legal rights, which extend beyond both UK and EU law as well as NHS contracts, according to Michael Bowsher QC, a former chair of the Bar Council’s EU law committee who was tasked by Unite to prepare the advice.

Bowsher said he had concluded that the deal poses “a real and serious risk” to future UK government decision making regarding the NHS.

“We consider that the solution to the problems TTIP poses to the NHS – and which is likely to provide the greatest protection – is for the NHS to be excluded from the agreement by way of a blanket exception contained within the main text of TTIP,” Bowsher said. 3

I disagree, however. Ad hoc exclusions are entirely insufficient. TTIP is so dreadful that we should fight to stop it clean in its tracks.

Voting to remain, gives assent to Cameron’s negotiated EU agreement as summarised in the “The Best Of Both Worlds” policy document and everything contained within it. Since TTIP is central to the agreement, a vote to remain will then be reinterpreted as a signal of our tacit approval to go ahead with TTIP.

If, on the other hand, we vote to leave the EU, then this automatically keeps Britain out of TTIP and potentially nips TTIP in the bud altogether. There are, of course, other “trade deals” in the pipeline, and we need to be committed to blocking them all. First and foremost though, the target must be TTIP.

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Additional:

On May 3rd, Press TV invited Paul Craig Roberts, the former Assistant Secretary of US Treasury, to debate with Sean O’Grady, the Finance Editor of The Independent over TTIP and the other “free trade agreements”:

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1 From paragraph 2.62–3 on p. 23–24 of “The Best Of Both Worlds: the United Kingdom’s special status in a reformed European Union”, published by UK government in February 2016 to “satisf[y] the duty to provide information set out in section 6 of the European Union Referendum Act 2015”.

The question of Brexit contains many interrelated issues that are both complex and far-reaching. I have therefore decided to present a sequence of shorter articles tackling specific topics. This one is a general plea to wavering leftists…

Four weeks today on June 23rd, Britain goes to the polls to decide on whether our collective future lies inside or outside the European Union. Whatever the outcome, our decision will very likely reshape the political landscape, not only inside Britain but also beyond our borders, for decades to come.

I have been trying to construct a short article outlining my own position favouring Brexit for many weeks now. But shortly after I begin, the doubts set in. Not doubts about leaving the EU, but doubts about how best to broach a frank and honest leftist argument in its favour?

At the heart of this difficulty is the nature of the debate itself. A debate – and I use the term loosely – that is necessarily being held at breakneck pace due to Cameron’s call for such a snap referendum and one wholly dominated by the most loudmouthed opinions of his Conservative Party…

In the blue corner “call me Dave” Cameron and in the other blue corner “The Boris” Johnson. Two of Bullingdon’s finest slugging it out for king, country and globalisation. It’s a spat that is about as phoney as any WWE wrestling bout and (for me at least) an even bigger turn-off.

So let’s be clear, neither Cameron, well-remembered for reneging on his “cast iron” Lisbon Treaty referendum pledge back in 2006 1, nor Johnson, who always hedges his bets on Europe, are fighting for what they believe in. They are not men of actual conviction, but political opportunists, and I am very far from alone in believing that Johnson’s lead role in the ‘Leave’ campaign was always part of a “choreographed game” stage-managed by Downing Street 2(so desperate to maintain a modicum of cohesion within the warring Tory party ranks but also determined to win the vote).

Yet rather than forcing our politicians to face up to a fuller debate, the media mostly lends its considerable powers to keeping it shut down. Deflecting public attention away from the important issues and persuading us instead to fixate on the latest posturing of each side’s leading personalities as well as the nonsense they are endlessly spouting. And since there are deeply divisive and unpleasant characters talking rubbish on both sides, I strongly advise the undecided to ignore all the grimacing and the cacophony of half-truths, outright lies and utterly risible innuendo – al-Baghdadi cares not one jot about your vote and neither does Vladimir Putin!

Which brings me to the next difficulty faced by all left-leaning proponents of Brexit, and this involves recognising and surmounting a peculiar, since unfamiliar, sense of shame. The shame one feels at letting the side down. That we are apparently cheering on the nationalist cause when we ought instead, by rights, to adhere to a more internationalist stance. We even hear the ugly accusation raised against advocates of Brexit that, presumably by virtue of sharing this single opinion with holders of entirely obnoxious political outlooks, we may likewise be adopting an inherently a racist position. Which is another desperate slur intended to suck the air out of any serious debate over the essential and quite legitimate questions about independence and sovereignty.

That said, there is also a genuine concern that needs addressing, although in order to grapple with it sincerely we must first issue a full admission of guilt. So here it is: the left has been duped. It became hooked on a pipedream after mistaking the European project for an antidote to Thatcherism. Having been, for many years, a staunch advocate of “Europe” (the project not the geographical region), regrettably I was one of the many who were duped.

For whereas true internationalism – the internationalism of the old left – is predicated on an political ideal of extending democratic freedom throughout all nations of the world, the EU was deliberately constructed to function as a constraint against those democracies. And it is baloney to claim (as many do) that the EU “pools” our sovereignties, when in truth it erodes them down to nothing. This is the raison d’être of globalism as opposed to internationalism.

The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy. Instead, it provides the most hospitable ecosystem in the developed world for rentier monopoly corporations, tax-dodging elites and organised crime.

Mason, the former Economics Editor for BBC’s Newsnight and Channel 4 news, who more recently resigned to become an independent voice, continues:

Its central bank is committed, by treaty, to favour deflation and stagnation over growth. State aid to stricken industries is prohibited. The austerity we deride in Britain as a political choice is, in fact, written into the EU treaty as a non-negotiable obligation. So are the economic principles of the Thatcher era. A Corbyn-led Labour government would have to implement its manifesto in defiance of EU law. 3

I have strongly criticised Paul Mason for fence-sitting on related issues in an earlier article, but here, in three tightly constructed paragraphs, he makes the most succinct and, as he says, “principled leftwing case for Brexit” I have yet to read. And yet, and yet… Mason then swivels on a sixpence to reverse his position, saying:

Now here’s the practical reason to ignore it. In two words: Boris Johnson.

Overall Mason’s article is an impressive one and I very much encourage everyone to read it in full. Like Mason, I too am deeply concerned that a person as slippery as Boris Johnson might soon hold the reins of power in Westminster, but then Johnson has been lined up for succession long before Cameron felt so electorally cornered by UKIP that he bought victory in the General Election at the cost of this unwanted (from his position) EU referendum.

As a self-confessed pro-Brexit leftist, Mason’s broader concern is that leaving the EU now may inadvertently supply ammunition to our enemies. This is a valid point and one that Mason rightly raises, however, I find little reason to dwell on it. Do we cut off our nose to spite our face? Or, more specifically, to dent the prospects of a clownish would-be Tory leader, who seems in any case to be Teflon-coated – and frankly is Johnson actually any more dangerous than Cameron and their other Bullingdon buddy Osborne – a leadership rival – who together head ‘Remain’?.

Interestingly, when Mason concludes his piece saying “the political conditions for a left Brexit are absent today”, he has already somewhat undermined that position in the preceding paragraph:

The EU’s economic failure is fuelling racism and the ultra right. Boris Johnson’s comparison of the EU with the Third Reich was facile. The more accurate comparison is with the Weimar Republic: a flawed democracy whose failures fuelled the rise of fascism. And this swing to the far right prompts the more basic dilemma: do I even want to be part of the same electorate as millions of closet Nazis in mainland Europe?

It is as if he cannot keep a lid on his own frustration – anti-EU passions that he had even greater difficulty holding in check during last week’s [Thurs 21st] appearance on BBC Question Time:

The trouble is that the left have been caught on the hop. As the EU dropped its liberal veil, a great many of its supporters hesitated and keep a respectful silence. This failure to react opened the way for right-wing forces to gain much of the ground the liberal left once occupied. Two years ago, back in May 2014, I posted an article entitled “the rise of UKIP calls for new strategies from the left”. Unfortunately, such new strategies are still to be properly delineated by the mainstream left, which makes the need more urgent than ever before

It is unlikely that we will have another opportunity to vote on our EU membership in the foreseeable future (and given that the EU appears bent upon its own destruction perhaps we may never get one) and so rather than leaving it to the paleoconservatives and ultra-right to campaign for Brexit, isn’t the better strategy to refrain from playing politics, and stand firm for what we actually believe? If we find ourselves disenfranchised and alienated by the Eurocrats in Brussels then we should speak up and boost the left campaign for Brexit (as Corbyn almost certainly would too, if he hadn’t been muzzled by the PLP 4). If enough of us do, we will steal the thunder of our enemy.

Traditionally, the left in Britain – the democratic socialists and not the social democrat usurpers of “The Third Way” – have consistently and solidly opposed the EU’s monolithic and anti-democratic institutions and their bureaucratic takeover of our society. So what has changed?

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Additional: a background on Brexit

When the UK first joined ‘Europe’ in January 1973, the decision had been a purely executive one; the agreement signed behind our backs by the Conservative government of Edward Heath. But then the European Economic Community or EEC (as the organisation was originally known) was merely a burgeoning association of trading nations, and usually known more simply as the “Common Market”. So this was not a change affecting our rights or our constitution, certainly not to begin with, but apparently little more than an expanded free trade zone – and after all, the UK were already founder members of the European Free Trade Association or EFTA, along with Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. The United Kingdom along with Denmark only ceased to be EFTA members when both then joined the EEC in 1973.

In these early days of EEC membership, the British public was just as divided on the issue as they are today, and, for the most part, this division in opinion fell along the traditional political fault-line of left against right. Back in the 1970s, however, it was socialists and trades unionists who, concerned by the top-down rule of bureaucrats in Brussels, were the most outspoken opponents. It was then much harder to find opposition within the rank and file of either Conservatives or Liberals (the Liberals being the only party to remain consistently “pro-European”).

A few years on, and with the 1975 referendum, the British electorate were at last given the chance to formally express their support or otherwise for the European project. Not to vote on whether or not to join, of course, since by then it was already a done deal, but on whether or not the UK should leave. So a loaded question obviously, and one further biased due to emphasis on the purportedly grave economic risks of an exit. Thus, with the deck fully stacked in favour of EEC membership, the nation went out to vote, and hardly surprisingly chose to stay put. 67% voting in favour, out of a 65% turnout.

But then something strange happened. Gradually, and throughout the following decade, the political poles were shifted around. The left becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of forming greater ties with our European partners, whilst the conservative right have grown ever more concerned and disaffected. The reason for these shifts actually aren’t hard to understand at all.

Thatcher loathed Europe, although what she really despised was the worker rights and other guarantees of social justice being snuck in through Europe’s backdoor. As a consequence, her almost rabid hostility towards European federalism (federalism being the big new F-word of the 1980s) being almost sufficient in itself to bring many on the left on board when it came to recognising the virtues of the fledgling union. Surely if this was the only route to achieving social justice then it was better to have more of it. Yet even so, a few on the left held on to their previous mistrust of Brussels. Tony Benn offers perhaps the best example, having remained unflinching in his objection to Europe’s inherent lack of democratic process. And here it is worth remembering that the “No” campaign of the ’75 referendum had been backed not only by Benn by other significant members on the left wing of the Labour Party, including cabinet ministers Michael Foot, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle.

More recently, the EU (which was formally established to replace the EEC after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, and again without any national referendum in Britain) has revealed how the organisation’s fundamentally neo-liberal credentials never went away. Barely disguising its own shameful part in the agonies of “austerity” now being foisted on Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy, with these measures insisted upon by “the Troika” of which two of its three parts are the EU itself. These actions serve to highlight what many progressives have failed to understand (and for many years, myself included), which is that the EU was never intended as a socialist project at all, or even an inherently ‘liberal’ one. Rather, and primarily, it has been a vehicle for concentrating power to the advantage of an already powerful financial and corporate elite. Which is why some on the left have remained just as strongly opposed to the EU as many on the right.

The following is NOT taken from UKIP’s manifesto:

Membership of the European Community/Union has contributed substantially to the unprecedented decline of industries in Britain, mass long-term unemployment and inability to trade on the world market. Besides huge contributions to the EU budget we have to purchase high priced food, thanks to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Because of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) we no longer have control over the fishing grounds around Britain with consequent loss of most of the fishing industry and fish stocks and pollution of the sea. Membership of the EU has entailed a switch away from taxing income and profit to consumption through the imposition of VAT. The burden of these costs and taxation is mainly carried by ordinary people especially those with low incomes or the unemployed.

The Treaty on European Union, Euro-federalism and EU Constitution will guarantee further decline as a result of which Britain will become an offshore area of a supranational state. The aim of European Union to be consolidated through the EU Constitution is to have its own military forces and be ruled in secret by unelected governors of an unaccountable European Central Bank, an appointed Commission and committees such as the European Council. These bodies consist of a majority of representatives of member states not answerable to our Government, Parliament or electorate and would be taking decisions which may not be in the interests of Britain.

Rather, it is taken from the “Statement of Aims” of a lesser know left-wing organisation called the Campaign Against Euro-federalism or CAEF. A statement that continues as follows:

Corporatism and fascism are also menaces which emanate from the drive to a European Union. Racism has been encouraged by the Schengen agreement which is now part of EU law with parallel legislation on immigration and asylum in Britain.

Yes, not everyone who opposes the EU is automatically against international cooperation. Nor is everyone who opposes the open border Schengen Agreement a rabid nationalist.

In any case, internationalism, as CAEF correctly point out, is quite different to European federalism. Internationalism involves the strengthening ties between sovereign nations, rather than the more aggressive dissolving away of borders between them. And European federalism further undermines the independence of the people of those nations (its member states) by passing executive powers that were held by democratically elected governments into the technocratic hands of an appointed commission. The EU – as it exists, rather than how we might like it to be – is better understood, not as a grand project for furthering international cooperation, but as one of the vital organs of a fully globalised world.

CAEF write:

Internationalism means the right to self determination and national democracy for all nations and nation states of the world which includes close relations with our friends in EU states and co-operating with peoples in all countries of the world.

And hear, hear to that!

The passage above is reprinted from an article posted in May 2014 entitled “the rise of UKIP calls for new strategies from the left”

In an article for the Sun on 26 September 2007, Cameron wrote: “Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations. No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.” […]

Barry Legg, co-chair of the Eurosceptic Bruges Group, said: “David Cameron needs to come clean with the British people: why is he breaking his pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty?”Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, told Sky News: “It looks as if that cast-iron guarantee has become very rusty indeed. I don’t think he’s being entirely honest with the British people.”

During the Labour leadership campaign, Corbn said he was ready to join an ‘Out’ campaign if David Cameron trades away workers’ rights, environmental protection and fails to crack down on Brussels-backed tax havens.

Late on Sunday evening Corbyn began assembling his shadow cabinet. The key position of shadow chancellor has been handed to his close ally John McDonnell. Benn was reappointed to the shadow foreign secretary job.

Several senior figures who served under Ed Miliband have either refused to join the team or have not been offered positions. In his resignation letter, Umunna said he would find it “difficult to abide by the collective responsibility that comes with serving in the shadow cabinet”.

He said: “That is why Jeremy and I have agreed I can more effectively support his leadership from the backbenches. In particular, it is my view that we should support the UK remaining a member of the EU, notwithstanding the outcome of any renegotiation by the Prime Minister, and I cannot envisage any circumstances where I would be campaigning alongside those who would argue for us to leave – Jeremy has made it clear to me that he does not wholeheartedly share this view.”

Emma Reynolds, who served Miliband as shadow Europe minister and shadow housing minister, also quit the frontbench citing concern about Corbyn’s position on the EU.